Risk tolerance is fundamental to decision-making and behaviour. Here we show that individuals' tolerance of risk follows a weekly cycle. We observed this cycle directly in a behavioural experiment using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Lejuez et al., 2002; Study 1). We also observed it indirectly via voting intentions, gathered from 81,564 responses across 70 opinion polls ahead of the Scottish ...

In recent years the problem of how inter-individual differences play a role in risk-taking behavior has become a much debated issue. We investigated this problem based on the well-known balloon analog risk task (BART) in 48 healthy subjects in which participants inflate a virtual balloon opting for a higher score in the face of a riskier chance of the balloon explosion. In this study, based on ...

Decision-making involves frontolimbic and dopaminergic brain regions, but how prior choice outcomes, dopamine neurotransmission, and frontostriatal activity are integrated to affect choices is unclear. We tested 60 healthy volunteers using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. In the BART, participants can pump virtual balloons to increase potential...

There are a variety of reasons someone might engage in risky behaviors, such as perceived invulnerability to harm or a belief that negative outcomes are more likely for others than for oneself. However, these risk-taking biases are often measured at a decision-making level or from the developmental perspective. Here we assessed whether or not risk-taking influenced perceptual judgments associat...

BACKGROUND A long line of theoretical and empirical evidence implicates negative reinforcement as a process underlying the etiology and maintenance of risky alcohol use behaviors from adolescence through emerging adulthood. However, the bulk of this literature has relied on self-report measures, and there is a notable absence of behavioral modes of assessments of negative reinforcement-based al...

BACKGROUND Few studies have explored longitudinal change in event-related brain responses during early recovery from addiction. Moreover, existing findings yield evidence of both increased and decreased signaling within reward and control centers over time. The current study explored reward- and control-related signals in a risky decision-making task and specifically investigated parametric mod...

The literature suggests that individuals with higher levels of anxiety tend to take fewer risks. With the knowledge that there are positive risks that aid in everyday functioning, the decline in risk-taking by those with anxiety could be of concern. Reappraising anxiety as beneficial has been shown to increase subsequent performance on a variety of tasks. The purpose of this study was to examin...

Abstract Introduction Increased impulsivity is a common neuropsychiatric feature in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), especially attributed to the use of dopaminergic medications. Interestingly, emerging evidence suggested that had changed drug-naïve PD patients. However, it remains unclear whether has been altered prodromal stage PD, namely isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior diso...

Title of Dissertation: EVALUATING COGNITIVE SEQUENTIAL RISK-TAKING MODELS: MANIPULATIONS OF THE STOCHASTIC PROCESS Timothy J. Pleskac, Ph.D., 2004 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Thomas S. Wallsten, Department of Psychology This dissertation evaluates, refines, and extends to a new paradigm, a set of stochastic models that describe the cognitive processes of individuals while they complete ...